Conference bookie::movies

29.0. "Sniper" by 37966::RIVERS (may this vale be my silver lining.) Tue Feb 09 1993 15:26

    Sniper stars Tom Berenger and Billy Zane as well, snipers.
    
    
    Their mission, eradicate a Panamanian politician and his associate, a
    (naturally) Columbian drug lord.  Lots of stomping through lush jungle,
    lots of guns, not too much blood and a liberal use of "Bullet-Cam"
    (tm).
    
    Berenger plays a hardened, solemn Marine sniper who is the best at what
    he does.  (and what he does requires a big, neat-looking gun).  He gets
    sent into the jungle on an apparantly regular basis to creep around and
    shoot people from a half mile off.  He also tends to lose his spotters. 
    This does not make our hero happy.  He collects dogtags from his fallen
    sidekicks and throughout the movie, looks at and/or fiddles with his
    collection a lot.  We are supposed to believe this constitutes angst.
    
    Billy Zane plays a Olympic shooter (only a silver medalist, though, I
    guess they thought being a gold-medal winner was too cliche :), who has
    spent his recent pasttime being on a SWAT team.  For reasons which
    aren't really made clear, it's decided that he, a civilian, will
    accompany Berenger on an assasination.  For reasons which are even less
    clear, the people in charge give Zane clout over the much more
    experienced Berenger.  Berenger's character is not too terribly happy
    about this, and even less so when he discovers that Zane has never
    actually shot anybody ("But I've had men in my sights," the character
    states early on in the movie.)
    
    You can see the drama coming from a mile off and the movie takes
    absolutely no turns to make it into anything other than a predicable
    Men with Guns story.  Our heroes quibble.  They strive to show each
    other up.  They get muddy.  They shoot at people and get shot and and
    sneak around a lot.  Bullet-cam is used to excess.  
    
    (Bullet-cam, for those confused, is my term for camera tricks utilizing
    the bullet's perspective.  Ala Costner's famous arrow shot in Robin
    Hood: Prince of Thieves.  It's neat maybe, oh, the first two times, and
    just gets funny from there.  The special FX people were just a bit too
    enamored of their new toy.)
    
    There are no surprises here, and some painfully awkward dialog that's
    supposed to be meaningful and deep.  As my erstwhile movie companion
    declared, "This is what happens when you try to mix action-adventure
    with philosophy."   The result is rather silly.  Not enough action to
    distract you from the pseudo-angst, and not enough intellectualism to
    make you forget that several minutes have gone by without anybody
    getting shot at.
    
    Both Berenger and Zane are better actors than this movie would
    indicate, but apparantly, they needed work.  Zane does a better villian
    (ala "Dead Calm") than he does city boy in the jungle, but he's
    pleasant to look at, even in camoflague.  Berenger looks like he's been
    hit by the Car of Life two or three times, but does well with what he
    has to play with.  Save for bullet-cam and some really unintentionally
    funny ways of people dying, the cinematography was nice, the scenery
    was cool and squishy just like a jungle should be, and you have to like
    a Men With Guns movie that didn't have even one exposed female breast.
    And I did like the sniper rifles.
    
    In summary, silly, but not totally worthless.  If you like guns and men
    with guns and Bullet-cam, probably worth a matinee ticket.  Otherwise,
    wait for video.
    
    ** out of ****
    
    kim
    

I also saw this one on video over the weekend. I was gonna write a review,
but Kim pretty much summed it up perfectly. Decent enough if you like the
genre, but nothing special.

6.0 out of 10.

alan